Elon Musk vs. Short sellers

[clmason]

Wow, amazing research OP. This was an great read. I hope the truth is revealed one day.

 

[adaptabl]

I am going to make a wild prediction and say he’s buying a lot of Tesla stock soon.

A perfect storm has been set up for offensive market buying by Elon. not happy with the sabotage and unjustly malicious short and media personalities. He’s also stated since the big layoff, severance packages include early vesting. Also, the profitability of 5k is a market milestone, investor confindence moment opportunity here.


Lastly, Elon is making substantial money this year from spacex, with something like 20+ launches. He’s got the funds available to buy into this momentum. With missing his brother Kimbal’s wedding in Spain and having to spend his birthday at the factory, all the more motivation to make like difficult for the shorts.

Spacex is loosing more money than Tesla.

 

[Rarity]

Spacex is loosing more money than Tesla.

I don't believe that to be true (easily disprovable). What is your source of information?

 

[adiggs]

Spacex is loosing more money than Tesla.

It's ok to provide links to sources you use as the basis for your assertions.

 

[SPadival]

I wonder if Linette Lopez has any connection to Chanos. She has published hit piece after hit piece even as her Tesla sources have been found to be unreliable and get burnt (Martin Tripp)

 

[Boomer19]

I wonder if Linette Lopez has any connection to Chanos. She has published hit piece after hit piece even as her Tesla sources have been found to be unreliable and get burnt (Martin Tripp)

she interviewed him (chanos) in february for business insider and then did a few articles (negative of course) about tesla over the coming months.

before that she only wrote one article about elon musk that i could find, and it was more about elon than tesla

 

[Vern Padgett]

On Enron:

In the mid-1990s, one of the specific charges I had at the mid-sized fund management company for which I was CIO was the natural resource sector - this included, inter alia, the natural gas and pipeline sector....thus, of course, Enron.

And, as most are even peripherally aware, Enron was big. Really big. One of the largest market-cap stocks of that era, and all because of how it had grown like Topsy.

Now, traditionally, pipelines were pretty boring, fusty stuff. Quasi-utilities; and like utilities the pork chop they hung around their necks in order to attract investors was a good handsome dividend.

Messrs Lay & Skilling, of course, had turned this all upside down. And (as I’ve related once or twice before in these pages) Ken Lay was very earnest, very likeable and....seemingly...very forthright. And every time I heard him talk - in conferences, in small meetings, in the industry breakouts that we still had in those days - I, as well as the rest of Wall St, came away very, very impressed indeed.

And boy, did I get pressure from the firm’s owners. “Why aren’t we in Enron? You need to get us some”, I would hear, quarter after quarter.

But every time I came back from listening to management, and would pore over their books, I simply could not figure out the numbers. They just didn’t add up! So, Enron became for me my albatross. “Everyone else must be smarter than me” - was the uncharacteristic conclusion I used to explain away the discrepancy between my read of the company and everyone else.

Enron itself was, in retrospect, one of the planks I used to sail away from the investment world. I had begun to hate Wall St, although there were far bigger reasons than just not understanding one of the single hottest investment opportunities of that time. But it did gnaw at me.

Slight consolation and satisfaction, then, when once safely ensconced in the heart of the Alaska Range, one year I heard how that house of cards had collapsed. And only then did I learn that the reason I couldn’t make sense our of their numbers was because they were, indeed, nonsense.

Now, Mr Chanos took the same data and applied it differently. Whereas I took them for an indication they were beyond me, he took them for what they were: garbage. So I take issue with Foghat’s wondering if he had any inside scoop. The numbers always all were there for all to see. Most swallowed them hook, line and sinker; I spat them out as indigestible; Chanos grabbed ‘em, stripped the reel of all line, and then turned around and stove in the boat.

This does not mean I regard him as someone to admire. I also don’t think he should be regarded as particularly clever. The article Jesse LnM uses to expose his nastiness suggests that he ‘owns’ the trick of hammering financial organizations by casting doubt. I disagree; I believe that the master of this, in our time, has been George Soros. It is a lot less difficult to break a company - even a monster like Enron or AIG - than it is to break a country. But it was Soros who broke the Bank of England. Now that took wile, smarts, and whale-sized particulars. As with Chanos, Soros claims no active subterfuge - he simply realized the weakness and positioned himself accordingly. But Wall St. thinks differently...and, in this instance, I agree with Wall St.

Thank you for posting that. I remember looking at Enron as an investment, in late 2001 or early 2002, after the Dow dropped 30% following the attacks on the Twin Towers.

I remember thinking that a decrease in value could have made sense for companies with their offices located in the Twin Towers, but then the whole market dropped, including QualComm, which was HQ'd in San Diego, not NYC. How did that make sense? How was QUALCOMM suddenly 30% less valuable?

So I decided it was mass panic, not informed investment. My father had taught me that the market moved on two factors: Fear and Greed. This looked like fear. I moved about 35 k out my home equity into a mix of common stocks.

Enron was one of the ones I looked at, but I never could figure out what it did. I only wanted to invest in corporations that did something I could understand, like make a product or offer a service.

I just couldn't figure out what Enron did, so I decided to let everyone else get rich on Enron, and I invested in other companies.

 

[SPadival]

Gordon Johnson, a solar analyst of Axiom Capital initiated coverage of Solarcity that day with a scathing Sell rating. This seem to set off the "waterfall" of Solarcity's decline. Over the next year, Johnson would publish report after report reiterating his bearish stance. This in itself isn't necessarily incriminating, perhaps he was even right. Since Tesla acquired Solarcity, Chanos moved his short onto TSLA. Curiously, Johnson is now no longer with Axiom and has moved to Vertical group. He is also now no longer a solar analyst and instead "specializes in Basic materials sector", which apparently also includes Tesla.

I think I may have found the Patient Zero of the financial crisis
Gordon Johnson
Vice President 2006 - 2008 Lehman Brothers, Inc
Sr. Equity Research Associate 2005 - 2006 Bear Stearns Companies, Inc

What are the odds that you worked for both the firms that collapsed and in the same sequence !!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordon-johnson-9056a08/ …

 

[Etna]

Spacex is loosing more money than Tesla.

Not true of course.

CNBC speaks to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell

Shotwell at 1:00: "We are profitable. We've had many years actually of profitability. The years that are financially rough for us are the years where we have had issues [like the launch pad explosion] 2016 and 2015 as well."

 

[ggr]

Not true of course.

CNBC speaks to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell

Shotwell at 1:00: "We are profitable. We've had many years actually of profitability. The years that are financially rough for us are the years where we have had issues [like the launch pad explosion] 2016 and 2015 as well."

Yes, thanks for finding that. I knew it, but if you do a google for "spacex profitability" you get a lot of articles asking when SpaceX will give a return to its investors. That is, of course, not the same thing. It's a private company so it doesn't have to reveal its financials, but SpaceX and Elon and Gwynne have said many times that the profit is being reinvested.

 

[mongo]

Yes, thanks for finding that. I knew it, but if you do a google for "spacex profitability" you get a lot of articles asking when SpaceX will give a return to its investors. That is, of course, not the same thing. It's a private company so it doesn't have to reveal its financials, but SpaceX and Elon and Gwynne have said many times that the profit is being reinvested.

In his own words:

Lori, this is ridiculous. Creating a rocket company has to be one of the dumbest and hardest ways to “make money”. If it was about money, I’d just do another Internet company.

Twitter

 

[Brando]

Can you imagine that in the 21st century, that a CEO for a multi-billion dollar enterprise isn't primarily motivated by money? It just drives the Wall St. gang nuts. Oh, and Madison Ave. that is so used to helping to con the public into buying/overpaying for products and they can't get Tesla to give them a dime.

<sarcasm>
Why won't a con man like Musk take SpaceX public??
Doesn't Musk want all that valuable Wall St. analysts to help guide him to profitability?
</sarcasm>

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Elon Musk will be dead in his grave before he let's SpaceX go public. Nothing but headaches and he Gwynn Shotwell have proven they don't need the money.

Dan

 

[electracity]

Not true of course.

CNBC speaks to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell

Shotwell at 1:00: "We are profitable. We've had many years actually of profitability. The years that are financially rough for us are the years where we have had issues [like the launch pad explosion] 2016 and 2015 as well."

Profitability alone doesn't say much in a privately held, capital intensive business. How the owners perceive ROI is what matters.

 

[SPadival]

I listened to the podcast version of the OP and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Elon Musk vs. Short Sellers - Interview with Professional Trader Jesselivenomore (07.04.18) - TechCast Daily

However, one thing that surprised me was that Jesse or Rob Maurer seems unaware of Matt Taibbi !! Have you not heard of the Goldman Sachs being referred to as the Vampire Squid? IMHO, he wrote a financial article with the most memorable first paragraph takedown of a Wall st bank. LOL

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

The Great American Bubble Machine – Rolling Stone

 

[KaJeh]

Big oil (Russia, US), big auto (US, Europe), labor unions (US), financial markets? Tesla is very disruptive to the status quo.

Sorry, that’s to general and probably without any proof. Chris mentions Einhorn and points attention to the strange timing from Moody. Still interested which 90% are really pushing the button. And i suspect Chris is right that those are not the people who make the most noise! Question remains: who are they?

 

[SteveG3]

Thank you Jesse! Elon just retweeted this Clean Technica article about this very thread!

A Sinister Cellar Of The TSLA Short Story? | CleanTechnica

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Thank you Jesse! Elon just retweeted this Clean Technica article about this very thread!

A Sinister Cellar Of The TSLA Short Story? | CleanTechnica

Wow, pretty scary stuff. I really, REALLY hope that Elon and the litigation team at Tesla go after this crap. Somehow these strong arm tactics have to be called out.

Dan

 

[gora321]

Thank you Jesse! Elon just retweeted this Clean Technica article about this very thread!

A Sinister Cellar Of The TSLA Short Story? | CleanTechnica

The fight against the FUD and those behind is intensifying...let us spread the information!

 

[avoigt]

I listened to the podcast version of the OP and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Elon Musk vs. Short Sellers - Interview with Professional Trader Jesselivenomore (07.04.18) - TechCast Daily

However, one thing that surprised me was that Jesse or Rob Maurer seems unaware of Matt Taibbi !! Have you not heard of the Goldman Sachs being referred to as the Vampire Squid? IMHO, he wrote a financial article with the most memorable first paragraph takedown of a Wall st bank. LOL

This is a great podcast and explains well what is happening and what kind of manipulation is happening from Chanos and larger hedge funds investing. For me this should be regulated as its a form of fraud of investors.

Also, it resonates very well with Elons Twitters notes from today about CNBC and Johnson.